Day 34: Let's Get Real

Facebook is fake.  In case you don't know this, I am going to state it plainly. Facebook is fake.

People portray their real lives in fake ways that make everyone else wish their lives were as perfect as the people's on facebook.  I know people whose lives are in terrible, torturous disarray, and yet their posts on facebook would lead you to believe their lives are perfect.  Their kids are perfect.  Their marriages are perfect.  Their spiritual lives are perfect.  Their jobs are perfect.  Their friendships are perfect.  Or that they are perfect.  Perfect wives, perfect husbands, perfect kids . . .

The danger in that should be obvious.  First of all, it's a lie.  And lies are the foothold of the enemy.  Secondly, if you are really in need of help, no one would ever know it.  So then when no one reaches out to you, you feel lost, alone, helpless, hopeless . . . the list could go on.

Plus, your "perfect life" might also cause someone else to feel like they're the only ones with imperfect lives, keeping them from ever reaching out to anyone else.

Facebook is fake.  And at times, we all live the fake facebook life.  All of us.

Facebook allows us to live in a fake reality where anything and everything is acceptable.

People air out their private discontent in a very public format.  They bash their families, their friends, their churches, their worship leaders, their spouses, their kids, the clerk at the grocery store . . . no one is exempt from the facebook rant.

This is basically the equivalent of walking into the lobby of your child's school, where you superficially sort of know a lot of people, and you just start ranting about something that has nothing to do with most of the people who are listening.

You would never do that.  And yet we do it regularly on facebook.

And I think that we who call ourselves Christians should most assuredly know better.  It makes us look bad, and it casts an ugly shadow on the One we are called to glorify.

The original idea behind facebook was to make fun of people.  In case you didn't know that, it's true.  Facebook was intended in a mean-spirited way.  Does that mean that it cannot be used for good?  Of course not.  It absolutely can be and is used for good purposes on a regular basis. 

How we use it is totally up to us.  We are called to be real, authentic people.  With real problems, real emotions, real lives.  Facebook does not give us a license to air out our hurts, problems, emotions, and realities for the world to see.  But it also should not be a place where we pretend these things do not exist.

All that to say, facebook is fake.  But we are called to be real.  Let's be real, in a real healthy way.

 .